Editing Recall (memory) (section)

===Serial recall===
Serial recall is the ability to recall items or events in the order in which they occurred.<ref name="Henson">Henson, R. (1996). Short-term memory for serial order. Dissertation for PhD of Philosophy. St. John's College, University of Cambridge</ref> The ability of humans to store items in memory and recall them is important to the use of language. Imagine recalling the different parts of a sentence, but in the wrong order. The ability to recall in serial order has been found not only in humans, but in a number of non-human primate species and some non-primates.<ref name="Botvinick"/> Imagine mixing up the order of [[phonemes]], or meaningful units of sound, in a word so that "slight" becomes "style." Serial-order also helps us remember the order of events in our lives, our autobiographical memories. Our memory of our past appears to exist on a continuum on which more recent events are more easily remembered in order.<ref name="Henson"/>

Serial recall in [[long-term memory]] (LTM) differs from serial recall in [[short-term memory]] (STM). To store a sequence in LTM, the sequence is repeated over time until it is represented in memory as a whole, rather than as a series of items. In this way, there is no need to remember the relationships between the items and their original positions.<ref name="Botvinick"/> In STM, immediate serial recall (ISR) has been thought to result from one of two mechanisms. The first refers to ISR as a result of associations between the items and their positions in a sequence, while the second refers to associations between items. These associations between items are referred to as chaining, and is an unlikely mechanism, according to research. {{citation needed|date=May 2014}} Position-item relationships do not account for recency and primacy effects, or the phonological similarity effect. The Primacy Model moves away from these two assumptions, suggesting that ISR results from a gradient of activation levels where each item has a particular level of activation that corresponds to its position.<ref name="Page">{{cite journal | last1 = Page | first1 = M. | last2 = Norris | first2 = D. | year = 1998 | title = The primacy model: A new model of immediate serial recall | journal = Psychological Review | volume = 105 | issue = 4| pages = 761–781 | doi=10.1037/0033-295x.105.4.761-781| pmid = 9830378 }}</ref> Research has supported the fact that immediate serial recall performance is much better when the list is homogenous (of the same semantic category) than when they are heterogeneous (of different semantic category). This suggests that semantic representations are beneficial to immediate serial recall performance.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Poirier|first=Marie|author2=Jean Saint-Aubin |title=Memory for Related and Unrelated Words: Further Evidence on the Influence of Semantic Factors in Immediate Serial Recall|journal=The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology|year=1995|volume=48|issue=2|pages=384–404|doi=10.1080/14640749508401396|pmid=7610273|s2cid=1167110}}</ref> Short-term serial recall is also affected by similar-sounding items, as recall is lower (remembered more poorly) than items that do not sound alike. This is true when lists are tested independently (when comparing two separate lists of similar-sounding and not similar-sounding items) as well as when tested using a mixed list. [[Alan Baddeley]] first reported such an experiment in which items within a list were either mutually dissimilar or highly similar.

There is evidence indicating that rhythm is highly sensitive to competing motor production. Actions such as paced finger tapping can have an effect on recall as the disruptive impact of paced finger tapping, but lack of consistent effect of paced irrelevant sound, is indicative of motor feedback from the tapping task disrupting rehearsal and storage.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hall|first=Debbora|author2=Susan E. Gathercole |title=Serial recall of rhythms and verbal sequences: Impacts of concurrent tasks and irrelevant sound|journal=Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology|date=February 2011|issue=1|doi=10.1080/17470218.2011.564636|pmid=21563018|volume=64|pages=1580–1592|s2cid=35493398}}</ref>

Eight different effects are generally seen in serial recall studies with humans:

; 1. List length effect: Serial recall ability decreases as the length of the list or sequence increases.

; 2. [[Serial position effect|Primacy and recency effects]]: Primacy effects refer to better recall of items earlier in the sequence, while recency effects refer to better recall of the last few items. Recency effects are seen more with auditory [[Stimulus (psychology)|stimuli]] rather than verbal stimuli as auditory presentation seems to protect the end of lists from output interference.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Cowan|first=Nelson|author2=J. Scott Saults |author3=Emily M. Elliott |author4=Matthew V. Moreno |title=Deconfounding Serial Recall|journal=Journal of Memory and Language|year=2002|volume=46|pages=153–177|doi=10.1006/jmla.2001.2805|s2cid=20450466}}</ref>

; 3. Transposition gradients: Transposition gradients refer to the fact that recall tends to be better to recognize what an item is rather than the order of items in a sequence.

; 4. Item confusion errors: When an item is incorrectly recalled, there is a tendency to respond with an item that resembles the original item in that position.

; 5. Repetition errors: These occur during the recall of a sequence when an item from an earlier position in the sequence is given again in another position. This effect is fairly rare in humans.

; 6. Fill-in effects: If an item is recalled incorrectly at an earlier position than its original place, there is a tendency for the next item recalled to be the item that was displaced by this error. For example, if the sequence is '1234' and recall began '124', then the next item is likely to be '3'.

; 7. Protrusion effects: These occur when an item from a previous list or test is accidentally recalled on a new list or test. This item is likely to be recalled at its position from the original trial.<ref name="Botvinick"/>

; 8. Word-length effects: Short words are recalled more accurately than longer words.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Avons|first=S.E. |author2=K.L. Wright |author3=Kristen Pammer|title=The word-length effect in probed and serial recall|journal=The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology|year=1994|volume=47|issue=1|pages=207–231|doi=10.1080/14640749408401151|s2cid=143692674 }}</ref>